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Our Friends With FOUR Kids

"It might be a little crazy," my friend Emily told me matter-of-factly. We had planned a long overdue trip to see our friends in Cumberland; and when I say "long over due" it had been over three years since we had seen one another. Life gets busy. I had a baby, she had two, and before we knew it, time had gotten away from us.

That, and I suffer from being a homebody. Having a child, it's been easy to sit on the excuse that it's easier not to travel. But in reality, my daughter travels quite well. It was time to leave behind excuses, and homebody tendencies, and hit the road!

So it was decided--we were taking out first "big" family trip to see my friend and her truly big family. Four kids is nothing to sneer at. She and her husband have put in some serious work building a family, and from my perspective of having just one child, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I knew that a lot of playing was definitely on the menu for our weekend, and I couldn't wait.

The first day we got there, I immediately felt at home. Her four curious children ages six, five, two and half, and six months are a little unit and they eagerly welcomed in my child, almost two, with open arms. "C'mon Ruby, come see this!" There was virtually no warming up period...it was awesome. Over the weekend, my little girl simply fell in line. We shared meals, played in the snow, enjoyed a campfire, and just hung out....because when you have four kids, you don't need to go anywhere for it to be a party.

Those who know me either in real life, or just from my blog, likely know that I am pretty firmly in the one child camp. I am happy with my current decision to have an only.... that is until I had this weekend with my friends. Quite unexpectedly, the four children didn't feel at all like "crazy." It felt more like "just right." In a way, it was one of the most relaxing weekends I have had a long time. I was able to sit back and let the kids play while I drank some wine, watched movies, and took the amazing view from their hilltop house.

Watching my daughter enjoy her friends (who are now more like pseudo-cousins) made my heart swell to epic proportions (like, I literally cried tears of joy). For the very first time, I could *almost* see myself with more kids. Maybe a whole village of them. The truth is, I envy that large family and all the noisy joy it brings. Not to diminish my own joy, of course, but there was something so satisfying about seeing all the kids running circles around the house and screaming as they chased each other in whatever imagination game they were playing.

My friend Emily and I are flip sides to each other's coins. We sort of always have been this way...I'm a staunch planner, she's go with the flow. She has all the softness of a butterfly and I'm built of hard edges. It's funny how these differences have given way and played out quite literally in our family choices.

In our separateness, there is a divergence that is striking: society judges moms with one kid just as harshly as they do moms with lots of kids. In the end, though, we are the perfect compliment to one another, just as our friendship has been. The pieces truly fit together so beautifully, and allow my child (as well as me and my husband) to experience being a part of that big, busy family, even if it's only for a weekend. This is what I love about diversity--it truly gives us gifts that are unexpected and special. Could one exist without the other? Maybe, but we're better together!